Why was artillery a more effective infantry support weapon on tanks than machine guns?

Upvote:3

A direct hit be an artillery shell is usually much more effective than a burst from a machine gun. For the infantry, the MG has two advantages compared to the howitzer, it can be carried by a few men and the ammunition is light enough to carry several hundred rounds.

Before WWII, the main roles of the tank were understood to be the breakthrough through infantry defenses and the exploitation of such a breakthrough. The Brits called that the infantry tank and cruiser tank roles. The defense against tanks was left to anti-tank guns, either self-propelled or towed. In part, that was due to the technological limitations of the era. Tanks were relatively small and lightweight and could not carry heavy guns.

WWII saw both an escalation in the size of the "medium" tank -- what would be called "main battle tank" later on -- and the introduction of workarounds to put a bigger gun onto a relatively small tank chassis. Those were tank destroyers and assault guns.

After WWII, the Americans concluded that their old doctrine was in error and added anti-tank defense to the roles of their main battle tanks. One might note that the US and the Soviet Union were able to produce true tanks in far greater numbers than Germany produced their cheaper substitutes.

So modern main battle tanks mount a large, high-velocity cannon for their anti-tank role. It is relatively cheap to add a dozen HE shells for infantry support, as well as a coaxial MG with several thousand rounds of ammunition.

Upvote:4

In supporting infantry, why are tanks equipped with large guns more effective than those with machine guns?

For one simple reason: a machine gun already is an infantry weapon. The infantry does not lack machine guns. They have plenty. What the infantry does lack is something that is able to destroy fortified strong points at range.

This is where the infantry support tanks come in. They don't need to be fast, they don't need any anti-tank capacities, but they need to pack a punch against static fortifications. Normally, that means high caliber direct fire weapons to destroy trenches, houses, bunkers and other local strongpoints that cannot be taken down by small arms fire.

Examples of those specialized infantry support tanks are the early German StuGs, but even before their deployment, the infantry support tanks like the early PzIV were equipped with high caliber direct fire guns for their role.

Tanks have machine guns for self defense against infantry. And if they lacked those, the German reports make special note of this and they were refitted. But those machine guns were used for defense.

For their actual offensive role of removing obstacles the infantry cannot remove with their infantry weapons, they used high caliber direct fire guns.

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